Don’t Garden Alone
Gardening with Grandkids is good for your health.
I enjoy gardening. The AARP article 5 Benefits of Gardening and Planting says that (1) gardening increases your exposure to sunshine which helps your body to develop vitamin D. Vitamin D mains the level of calcium you need for your bones. (2) Research indicates that gardening decreases your risk of dementia. (3) Gardening reduces the level of the stress hormone cortisol. (4) Gardening is also a terrific aerobic exercise. Just get out there to pull some weeds to find out. Finally, (5) gardening reduces loneliness. The article suggests that working in community gardens is one way to meet new people with similar interests.
I am seldom alone in my garden. I often have grandkids in the garden with me. In the photo at the top, my grandsons and I are harvesting the beautyberries from the bush in our garden to make into beautyberry jam. They help to pick the berries, then help clean and prepare the berries, and finally, they help to eat the delicious jam. It is a group effort.
Gardening requires a lot of outside time. We plant seeds or seedlings, then must pull weeds and water the growing plants. We also spread mulch to help to stop the weeds from growing. Finally, we get to harvest and eat the produce from our garden. We get exercise, we get sunshine and we produce healthy vegetables to eat. It’s a win/win situation for us all.
We grow plants in the ground of course, but we also have a hydroponic garden where we grow vegetables. The grandkids enjoy the science of the hydroponic system. They know that the water must be within the correct acid/base limits, so they help to check the pH of the water. They help to measure the correct amount of nutrients, and they know it must be kept plugged in so the pump continues to provide the water and nutrients needed by the growing green vegetables in the system. Growing plants in the hydroponic system without soil helps them to understand the importance of soil for the plants that are growing in the soil.
Our butterfly garden keeps us busy too. We grow flowers for the butterflies to get their nutrients and we grow the plants required by the caterpillars. We watch each day to see which butterflies are in the garden and check frequently for new caterpillars. We love to watch the metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.
So, put on your gardening gloves and get a garden started. Gardening will increase your vitamin D, decrease the chance of dementia, reduce your stress level, provide you with aerobic exercise, and possibly decrease your loneliness — especially if you get your grandkids involved.
